Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

— President Barack Obama, in a commencement speech yesterday to the graduating class of Ohio State. (Something tells me that students don’t learn that government is a “sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems” in many courses at Ohio State, unless it’s followed by the words “when the Republicans are in charge of it.”)

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

By the way, wasn’t the same sentiment that Obama expressed on Sunday said in a much more punchy fashion with multimedia and B-roll and folksy-sounding narrator at the 2012 Democrat National Convention?

Our Founding Fathers considered government to be a necessary evil. They believed that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. James Madison warned against the "tyranny of the majority" and he's the guy who wrote the Constitution.

So the Founding Fathers tried really hard to create a government that could not turn from a servant into their master. They were amazingly successful.

The proper size and scope of government is always a legitimate topic of debate. But the default setting is the limited government established by the Constitution. What is unpatriotic about that?